Vain boasting; empty bluster; pretentious, bragging speech; rant.
These are rejoinders born out of a need to deflate a balloon filled with what others view as pomposity or rodomontade.
-- Corey Mesler, "Dispatch #1: Buying the Bookstore (The Early Days)", ForeWord, August 2000
The very absurdity of some of his later claims (inventors of jazz, originators of swing) . . . has made him an easy target in a way far beyond anything generated by that other (and in some ways quite similar) master of rodomontade, Jelly Roll Morton.
-- Richard M. Sudhalter, Lost Chords
. . .the me-me-me rodomontade of macho rap. -- Nicholas Barber, "In the very bleak midwinter", Independent, January 7, 1996 But what he said -- that if any official came to his house to requisition his pistol, he'd better shoot straight -- was more rodomontade than a call to arms or hatred.
-- William F. Buckley Jr., "What does Clinton have in mind?", National Review, May 29, 1995
Rodomontade comes from Italian rodomontada, from Rodomonte, a great yet boastful warrior king in Italian epics of the late 15th - early 16th centuries. At root the name means "roller-away of mountains," from the Italian dialect rodare, "to roll away" (from Latin rota, "wheel") + Italian monte, "mountain" (from Latin mons).
From Dictionary.com
Rodomonte defending the bridge; illustration by Gustave Dore to Orlando furioso
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